The Phenomenon Of Xi'an Famous Foods In New York City

Jason Wang, the 25-year-old co-owner of Xi'an Famous Foods in New York.

Every day at noon, a 30-minute line winds outside the 900-square-feet store of Xi’an Famous Foods in midtown Manhattan. Many of those in line may be unfamiliar with Xi’an, a city in western China’s Shaanxi Province and home to the terracotta warriors. Yet they all know the city’s signature dishes—spicy cumin lamb burgers, cold skin or hand-ripped noodles, and lamb “Pao-Mo” soup—thanks to Xi’an Famous Foods’ six branches in New York City and their surging popularity across a diverse crowd. Some of their more well-known customers include food program TV hosts Andrew Zimmern and Anthony Bourdain.

To Jason Wang, 25, who co-owns Xi'an Famous Foods with his father, David Shi, the restaurant chain is as much a matter of personal significance as it is a business interest. Born in Xi’an to a family that loves cooking, Wang vividly reminisces about the smells and tastes of “Pao-Mo,” or steamed buns soaked in a rich lamb soup, that his grandpa cooked for him in elementary school. Like most Chinese families, Wang’s family always gathered on holidays to prepare a feast, often featuring Xi’an specialties. The yearning for home flavors prompted Wang and his father to make foods with grandpa’s secret recipes after moving to the U.S. in the late 1990s.

To sell Xi’an cuisine was a byproduct of that nostalgia. In 2005, after taking on a wide spectrum of jobs in the restaurant business, Wang's father opened his own bubble tea shop in Flushing, an Asian-heavy district in the New York City borough of Queens, and sold hand-made Xi’an foods on the side. “It wasn’t even about making money back then,” Wang recalls. “We kind of miss this food ourselves and we want to eat it at home. So it just happened to be something we were making and just selling.”

But the timing was right. The mid-2000s saw new waves of immigrants from northern China flock to the U.S. They brought novel tastes to a food landscape previously dominated by Cantonese cuisine. In New York those local specialty snacks became so popular that “people started to take the journey to Flushing to try those foods,” says Wang. It did not take long for Wang’s father to realize that his food products were more profitable than the bubble tea. In late 2005 he opened the first Xi’an Famous Foods in Flushing with his savings. It is a hole-in-the-wall place with only two employees that still exists today in the basement of Golden Mall. The closely guarded spice and sauce recipes from Wang’s grandpa, each including more than 20 ingredients, became the business’ trump card.

Wang himself joined the family business shortly out of college. A business degree from Washington University in St. Louis landed him a decent job managing inventory at
Target. Yet as someone who earned his own pocket money with a web development start-up in college, Wang is more of an entrepreneur than a white-collar office manager. Soon, he found himself starting anew in New York, learning humbly about every aspect of the family restaurant’s operations. On his feet for 13 hours a day, he pulled noodles, took orders, cleaned up, and even delivered ingredients with a baby cart. “[Employees] once left their phone on after they called my dad. They were talking among each other and said, the boss’ son sucks, he can’t make anything. He’s so slow.” Wang recalls the rough takeoff with a laugh.

What Wang brought with him, though, was a grand vision for future growth. Despite the Chinese nature of Xi’an Famous Foods, Wang never confined the business to the niche market of the Chinese community. He blamed most Chinese restaurants’ failure to expand on their narrow-mindedness in defining the marketplace. “[Chinese] people always think Chinatown is the world,” Wang points out. “Everyone is focused on how we compete in Chinatown as a microcosm…with those ‘northerners or southerners,’ not really how we compete in the U.S. with other types of restaurants.”

Wang had in mind a much broader audience. He realized, from his experience growing up in the States with non-Asian friends, that many Americans looked for not a particular type of, but the authenticity of the food. As a college student, Wang would go out of his way with classmates to hunt down authentic cuisine, whether it was Chinese, Mexican, American or Mediterranean. With a global food culture, Manhattan is very much like the college environment, where many open-minded young people are adventurous about food experiences. Wang was confident that as long as they preserved the quality of their product, Xi’an Famous Foods would find its audience in Manhattan and even beyond.

Jason Wang at the central kitchen of Xi'an Famous Foods in Brooklyn, New York

And he was right. In four years, four new branches of Xi’an Famous Foods took root: in midtown Manhattan, in Chinatown, at St. Mark’s Place near New York University, and in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Another sit-down restaurant, Biang!, also opened in Flushing in 2012. The stores are quick-eats and small in size, with no more than 35 seats in each, and food prices are rock-bottom—a lamb burger sells for $3; a large bowl of noodles with meat, less than $8. By a conservative estimate, the chain attracts 140,000 customers a year on weekdays at the midtown location alone, which means annual revenue of at least $1.1 million. Uniquely, the stores are able to straddle between two ends of the population: on one end they have customers who are fresh-off-the-boat Chinese immigrants or tourists; on the other end, they’ve gained followers with absolutely no Chinese heritage, who now account for more than half of their customers.

The chain’s popularity drew in TV producers Andrew Zimmern and Anthony Bourdain. They featured the Xi’an specialties in their “Bizarre Foods” and “No Reservations” on the Travel Channel, which are now shown on the in-store TVs. This year Wang won two food awards, Zagat’s “30 Under 30: NYC’s Food World Up-And Comers,” and “The Eater Young Guns Class of 2013.”

Wang saw the rapid scale-up as both a blessing and a curse. He knew that to harness the growth, administrative and operational improvements would have to be made. He has since upgraded the stores’ computer software, standardized employee training, and adopted a real-time system for revenue control. He’s also rearranged and translated the menu, replacing elusive Chinese names with more intuitive phrases such as “spicy and tingly” or “cold skin noodles.” To make information easily accessible, Wang maintains an active social media presence onFacebook, Twitter and most recently, Instagram – this is also part of his promotional strategy, in addition to giving away free food at grand openings.

Employees hand-make products at the central kitchen of Xi'an Famous Foods.

The bigger challenge, though, is to keep up with the exponentially growing demand. Wang recalls that in the business’ old days, one small lunchbox of dough was all they needed for a day’s serving. But nowadays, only huge buckets will suffice. Anticipating the pressure from expansion three years ago, he began setting up a 5,000-square-foot kitchen in Brooklyn, where a dozen employees, on day and night shifts, now mass-produce noodles, sauces and meats used in the individual stores. This way not only the quality of products is standardized, but cooking and service in the restaurants is also speeded up significantly.

Most recently Wang has entertained the idea of mechanized production. However, the cold skin noodle machines he imported from China either made terrible products or were simply dysfunctional. As of now, all the products sold at Xi’an Famous Foods are still hand-made. As for the secret spice and sauces that flavor 85% of their dishes? Those are still made at home by Wang’s father, though Wang himself is now ready to shoulder that responsibility.

As Xi’an Famous Foods grows, noise abounds as to how to attract an even bigger crowd—rent larger spaces, make the flavors less spicy to accommodate American tastes, air sports in-store, or play softer, Chinese harp music instead of blasting hip-hop songs. But Wang is never a fan of blind expansion. “No one can go for everyone in the world, unless you sell air,” says Wang, who insists on catering to a specific segment and keeping the food authentic. “Not everyone likes hip-hop, but to me, the segment I’m going for would—people who are younger, more adventurous about things, people who don’t mind a little spice in their life, in music form or in food form.” The key to sustaining growth, as Wang points out, is to grasp what this specific audience holds dear. “Do they value a big banquet hall with dragons, big golden gilded phoenixes? I don’t think people value it that much in Manhattan. People value something that’s more down-to-earth, what product you sell.”

Wang’s plan is to open more stores in New York City and continue to directly manage them. He has fended off his father’s idea of franchising, which Wang believes would only lower product quality and thin out profits. One path he is willing to explore is event catering, given that many have made such inquiries on the website. Or expanding into New England. Having cooked recently at the Eater Young Guns event in Los Angeles and attracted a large crowd there, Wang is gaining confidence about fanning out.